According to the Concise English Dictionary I use at work (which admittedly is two years old and may have been revised slightly), texted isn't a word and so makes about as much sense as using text as a verb. To be correct, you'd have to say something like "I sent a text message to such and such", and that's just a bit long-winded really.

We're talking about modern English usage here and I don't think we have irregular usages being created now that English is a set language compared to mix of French/Saxon/whatever tongues that it grew from.

And I'd like to point out sleep, weep, peep, seep, fall, call, catch and match ALL have separate past tense forms. The examples given below of set and put are more germane to the point of this thread.

If I read a statement like, say, your one in Scout's thread I start off under the impression I'm reading a past tense comment and then the 'text' comes up and forces me to re-evaluate what I already read and then read the whole sentence and work out whether the word 'texted' should have been written or one of the other parts of the statement is wrong.

This is irritating to me and clearly is irritating to a few other people. I can't really work out why you even bother trying to defend something like this while still typing accurately and not just using 'quick and easy' txt spk or similar?

it makes sense. There are some really common words in English where the past tense is the same as the present (set, put etc) and there's no confusion. I don't see why text can't have two past tenses. I think it's all quite interesting - better than us all speaking Esperanto.

like if someone said "I text him on Sunday" - does that mean that have already sent this person a text or that they regularly send them a text on Sundays? This is a misunderstanding that could lead to a needless death.

Say for example when I go on gumtree and I see an ad that is full of spelling/grammar mistakes, I don't usually click on the ad and go "OMG, I MUST MOVE NOW" cos I assume the landlord is a massive 'tard. Or doesn't speak English to a high enough standard to make communicating with them easy.

Obviously, I can overlook a few errors but if the ad just goes "HELLO LOOK AT AD NOW BIG CLEAN HOUSE MUST LOOK RENT NOW SEX FUN HOUSE" my brain does go "...wut?" and I ignore the ad. Or click on it for lolz.

It's more annoying when you've grown up being corrected on your grammar constantly and the person who used to correct you (my mum) still says "should of" and wrote "CD's" on the box she packed the other day. Now I correct her just because I find it amusing.

(and I said I'll be posting less, not never, I need to feel like I'm making steady progress)